Through The Looking Glass
I was in Liverpool in the 1960s and met C there. Obviously, she wore as trendy clothes as she could afford and Liverpool’s trendiest boutique was Through The Looking Glass on Mount Pleasant.
Was Through The Looking Glass Here?
I think it was here in this basement. I think it was owned by one of The Scaffold.
The Magical Church of St. Luke
I am not a religious person, but I like some places of worship.
St. Luke in Liverpool or the bombed-out church, is one such place for many reasons. It stands proudly at the end of Bold Street, and its state due to a Nazi firebomb, says to many, that times may get bad, but I’ll still be here to cheer you on your way.
On Friday night, as I passed it was open. It was C’s favourite church and she’d always wanted to enter, but it was always locked. So I went in to see the party and auction that was going on.
Long after we’re all gone, St. Luke will still be there, putting two fingers up to the despots, oligarchs, stupid politicians, religious bigots and cruel people of this world.
But St. Luke is winning. Type bombed-out church into Google and you find it immediately. It really is a unique place in the world. And it appears in cyberspace too!
Narrowboats in Liverpool City Centre
Who’d have thought it?
Narrowboats in Liverpool City Centre
But they are here within walking distance of the Pierhead and the new shopping of Liverpool One.
Billy Fury
History has forgotten Billy Fury, who was one of the first real pop stars to come out of Liverpool.
It was good to see this statue at the Albert Dock, by the Tate Liverpool.
Ferries Across The Mersey
In the 1960s, the Mersey Ferries were an important transport link, that in truth has been superceded by the railway from Liverpool Lime Street and Central stations to the Wirral.
When I was in Liverpool, the ferries were then named Mountwood and Overchurch. Now the same ships are called Royal Iris of the Mersey and the Royal Daffodil. I remember one night in about 1966, the two boats hit each other in a particularly bad storm. For months, you could still sea the damage.
I was also roaring drunk on a ferry once. Never again. Drink and swells from the sea don’t mix. Boy was I sick.
If it can be managed on my my trip around the 92 clubs I should visit Tranmere on the 27th October. It looks like it might just be possible to use the ferry one way.
Around Liverpool Pierhead
I walked through the shopping centre, got my hotel for the night and then moved on to the Pierhead and the new Museum of Liverpool.
In the 1960s, the Pierhead was the bus terminal and much of the area was just bus parking. Now it is much better.
Around Liverpool’s Shopping Centre
Liverpool’s shopping area has changed a lot since the 1960s. The main change is that the buses no longer roar up the middle, like they used to and still do on Oxford Street in London. Liverpool shows just how poor Oxford Street is and how the latter would benefit from pedestrianisation.
I took these pictures on Friday afternoon and early on Saturday morning.
You will notice that buildings like Marks and Spencer are quite old, but well preserved. Although since the 1960s a lot has been torn down and rebuilt. And of course if you move towards the Pierhead, you come to Liverpool One, the new shopping area.
Sadly though the Kong Nam, where generations of students ate seems to have gone. In those days it was often you ate your Chinese meal with a bottle of Guinness.
The hotel above St. John’s market was the place, where C and I virtually had our first holiday without the children. It was terrible, but I could place the date exactly, as on the Saturday night, Abba won the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo. The link says it was the 6th April 1974. Breakfast was so awful, I can still see the restaurant manager wringing liquid out of the scrambled egg, when I complained.
An Old Cinema in Liverpool
Liverpool is a city, where I can walk about the city centre and find loads of memories from my time in the 1960s, there both post and after the time I met C.
An Old Cinema in Liverpool
This cinema in Lime Street, was a bit smaller than most of the others and generally showed less mainstream films. I’m trying to remember what I saw there with C, although I can remember seeing The Collector there with another girl.
One memory of the cinema was that in 1968 or so, a film called Sixteen or something like that was released. It was a feature length film made with sex education in mind. You had the strange site of nuns herding school-girls into the cinema to see it.
I wonder if it had any positive effects. No-one knew what the nuns thought of it.
Queen Elizabeth Visits Liverpool
Not the person, but the cruise ship. Read about it here.
There is rather a war growing up about attracting cruise ships to the various ports in the United Kingdom. Liverpool is particularly well placed in that cruise ships come in directly in front of the Pierhead with the Three Graces and within a short walking distance of the major shops and museums. London’s cruise terminal is forty kilometres down river. Even Edinburgh, which has a deep water port at Leith, hasn’t got its act together and has even discredited its position with the farce over the trams.
Tourism is going to be one of the things that help to grow the economy. Are the various ports around the country, up to scratch?
Happy Hundreth Birthday to the Liver Building
The Liver Building is one hundred today.
Remember that the Liver Birds on the top flap their wings, when a virgin walks past on the Pierhead.
The BBC did a piece about the anniversary this morning and in it Phil Redmond, said that “Liverpool is the Second City of Empire”.
The Anonymous Widower 